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Revision of Nilz' Profession Guide from Sat, 2009-03-21 18:30

Submitted by Nilz on Sat, 2009-03-21 05:34

Introduction

This guide is focused towards player who are a little confused about what professions to take. In this guide I will explain what each profession is and how it works with th other professions. There are 14 total professions but there are 3 secondary which are professions that can be learned plus your 2 primary. WARNING, this IS NOT a profession leveling guide!!!

Mining is a gathering skill that allows you to take a mining pick to various veins that litter the landscape and attempt to get raw metals and gems for crafting armor, weapons, potions, jewels, and many other items. Mining, in my opinion, is one of the best professions to get gold.

Mining fuels many professions, although it goes well with some more then others. The following is a list of comparisons between the other professions and mining.

Alchemy: Mining and alchemy do not go along together very well. While alchemy can transmute metals and some potions may need metals, herbalism would always be better.
Blacksmithing: Most everything a blacksmith makes is done with metal and gems obtained through mining. You should rarely pick up blacksmithing without mining, as the ores required to skill up are extremely expensive.

Enchanting, Skinning, Talioring: These three professions do not require mining nor interfere with it. Skinning is an exceptional choice to take with mining though, as with two gathering skills you can bring in the money fast.
Engineering: Like blacksmithing, engineering requires rare gems and metals. If you plan on becoming an engineer then you will want to bring mining along to fund your crafts.
Herbalism: Herbalism and mining do not go together very well. There is good reason, of course. Mining and herbalism use the mini-map to detect “nodes” (locations veins and herbs). You can only detect one type of node at a time, so you can’t detect both mineral veins and herbs.

Jewelcrafting: You will need mining to take full advantage of jewelcrafting. Most items created with jewelcrafting will require rare gems which can be found easier with prospecting (a jewelcrafting skill).
Leatherworking: Mining and leatherworking do not go along together as leatherworking requires leather from skinning.

As a miner you spend a lot of time digging things out of the ground. This has the added advantage of toughening you up. This is a passive ability that was added in patch 3.0.2 that you automatically gain as a miner and adds health to your charater based on the level of your mining skill. The health added is shown in the table below.

Skinning is a gathering skill that allows you to take a Skinning knife and skin various beasts, dragonkins, and silithids to gather leather, hides, and scales. Some enemies can be skinned, while others can’t, but those that can be provide extra income from enemies already slain. The materials gathered from Skinning are useful in numerous trades and can be sold for a good bit at the auction house!

Skinning is the source of materials for many professions, although it is primarly used for Leatherworking. Leather by itself sells really well do to how it's used in so many crafted items and is one of the cheaper routes to go for the Darkmoon Faire.
Alchemy: Skinning and Alchemy do not go together and you would be at a major disadvantage with this combo.
Blacksmithing: Blacksmiths require metal and sometimes leather for their creations. blacksmithing and Skinning do not go together due to the high price of metal, but leather is used in many recipes.
Enchanting, Talioring: These two do not require skinning but they also don't interfere with it. A fine choice should you not want to take up Leatherworking and want to have a craft that produces something.
Engineering: Skinning is not a very good choice with Engineering. Once again, while many recipes may call upon leather, you'll find many many more requiring mining.
Herbalism or Mining: Dual gathering professions are very important to consider because of the good chance of making a decent profit off just gathering materials and reselling to players. Taking skinning then Mining or Herbalism is a good choice because Skinning doesn't have a radar finding skill (the skin is off the enemies corpse) so you it won't interfere with them!
Jewelcrafting: Jewelcrafting goes best with Mining and will get little to nothing out of Skinning.

Herb Gathering is the profession for picking various herbs used mostly in the by Alchemy. Herbs are spread throughout every zone in the game and many are considered very valuable, even if they aren’t all that rare! Herbalism is very similar to Skinning and Mining in that it is a gathering profession used to gather resources to be used in other professions.

Herbalism is the source of materials for mostly Alchemy, but can be combined with differnt professions depending on what your aim is!

Alchemy: Herbalism and Alchemy are the perfect match. The herbs can be turned into potions which can even in some cases extend the value of certain combation of herbs. If you have Herbalism and you don't want to go with Skinning then for sure get Alchemy

Blacksmithing: Blacksmits require metal, not herbs. It's a very bad combo with Herbalism.

Enchanting, Talioring: These two do not require Herbalism but they also don't interfere with it. A fine choice should you not want to take up Alchemy or Skinning.
Engineering: Herbalism is not a very good choice with Engineering. Once again, while many recipes may call upon herbs, you'll find many many more requiring mining.
Skinning or Mining: Dual gathering professions are very important to consider because of the good chance of making a decent profit off just gathering materials and reselling to players. However, do not take up Mining and instead op for Skinning. Mining uses the "Find Mineral" command which doesn't work with the "Final Herb" command.
Jewelcrafting: Jewelcrafting goes best with Mining and not Herbalism.

Tailoring is a primary profession designed to create various pieces of equipment out of cloth tailored mostly towards Priests, Mages, and Warlocks. Cloth is a resource that is obtained from the world from various enemies (mostly enemies that are the “Humanoid” type). The cloth can then be turned into various forms of cloth based equipment (like robes, pants, shoes, etc.) and other cloth based items like bags.

Tailoring works with all gathering professions. Enchanting, Mining, Skinning, and Herbalism are all perfect companions to Tailoring. Blacksmithing, Engineering, Leatherworking, and Jewelcrafting are often less desired due to their need of resources. However, many players who have a substantial flow of gold can often ignore their gathering professions and just purchase the necessary materials off of the AH. It’s all about your level, the time you have available, and how much money you can spend on a profession.

Alchemy is one of the primary professions. Those who take up Alchemy become an Alchemist which is able to brew potions, elixers, oils, and flasks. These various consumables can restore health and mana, grant invisibility, give elemental resistance, and much more. They can also convert various metals and high level essences into different properties through the power of transmutation.

Alchemy only goes along well with one other primary profession: Herbalism. Herbalism allows you to gather herbs which can then be used to make potions. You are not required to take Herbalism along with Alchemy, however, buying the herbs from the auction house to level up and brew certain potions is way more expensive and time consuming then gathering them yourself.

If you’re level 80 and have lots of spare money and don’t mind the very expensive cost of leveling Alchemy up yourself then some would suggest taking Enchanting or Tailoring. Both of these professions are not dependant on another profession and give you access to more ways to make money.

Blacksmithing is a primary trade skill. When choosing Blacksmithing as a primary skill, make sure you really want it, as you may only have two skills at one. Also when you choose Blacksmithing you are pretty much locked into taking Mining as your second primary skill. You are able to unlearn trade skills but if you do this, you will lose all your skill points in it. If you were to start Blacksmithing again you would have to start from the bottom, not at your last skill level. This goes for all professions.

Mining is usually paired with blacksmithing, as you can find your own materials to use while blacksmithing, instead of having to buying them. While it is possible to go without mining, it would be extremely expensive to do.

Leatherworking is a primary trade skill. When choosing leatherworking as a primary skill, make sure you really want it, as you may only have two primary tradeskills at once. Also when you choose leatherworking you are pretty much locked into taking skinning as your second primary skill.

Skinning is a must if you are a leatherworker, as you can then find your own materials to use instead of having to buying them. While it is possible to be a leatherworker without taking skinning, it would be extremely expensive to do.

Engineering can be a difficult but ultimately a very rewarding one! There are many things that an engineer gains access to that no other class can get, for example class specific epic helms and created epic flying machines. These abilities alone attract many players. There are other things along the way that will help you out as well, but be warned, Engineering is a fairly selfish profession. While there are some things you can create and sell, many are for your use only as they require engineering skill to use.

Mining goes well with engineering as metal bars are a common ingredient in Engineering recipes. It's less expensive in the long run if you choose mining as your second primary trade skill.

The Inscription profession allows its practitioners, called "scribes," to enhance the spells and abilities of players’ characters, such as enhancing a rogue's Backstab ability to deal more damage to stunned targets, or allowing a priest’s Circle of Healing to heal one more target.

Inscription works best with Herbalism however you can get another profession if you have enough money to buy all of the needed herbs.

EnchantingEnchanting is the art of using magic to improve items - turning wood into magic wands or increasing the bonuses of a piece of equipment. Enchanting requires raw materials, most of which come from disenchanting quality items (at least uncommon). This art thus requires no special gathering skill.

Enchanting works well with all other professions because you make you own reagents with disenchanting, however, in my opinion, I think the best mix would be with Tailoring because at around level 30 (tailoring) you can make Brown Linen Robe and then disenchant it for reagents.

Jewelcrafting is a profession which was introduced in the Burning Crusade expansion. Players are able to make rings, trinkets, necklaces and more, as well as gems for socketed items. Special for any Jewelcrafters, are figurines which are Bind on Pickup. Figurines are special animal-shaped trinkets. Figurines must be equipped in one of the trinket slots to get their effects as well as make them usable. When the figurine is used, it summons a magical creature that will aid you in some way. Each figurine is unique.

Like so many others, this craft relies heavily on Mining. You don't have to be a miner to craft Jewelry, but you will need large amounts of ores, bars, and gems. If you have another toon to provide you with materials, that works fine. If not I highly recommend taking mining as your second tradeskill. Otherwise the cost to you will be extremely high, considering the number of gems and ore required just to hit 300 skill.

Cooking is one of the 3 secondary professions. It is fairly cheap to level because the ingredients needed are found by killing beasts. Because it is a secondary profession every other profession goes well with it.

Fishing is one of the 3 secondary professions. It is fairly cheap to level because all you need is a fishing rod and water. Because it is a secondary profession every other profession goes well with it. If you are having trouble leveling you fishing then go to a lower level area and fish there, you can also use items to increase your level for a short amount of time such as a Shiny Bauble.

First Aid is the last of the 3 secondary professions. It is, in my opinion the hardest of the 3 to level especially if you put it off until a higher level. Basically all you need is some cloth. This skill is very useful in that it heals you without have to buy food or waste potions.

Comments

Mining - +50 Stamina is always good and it is fast and lucrative to level
Jewelcrafting - The JC only gems are very (+51 Stam vs +30)nice and can again increase your survivability and threat
Blacksmithing - The extra socket is nice but unless you have JC +50 Stam is better than the +30 you are likely to get from the extra socket.
Engineering - I agree that this can be useful but on the hard mode content (and IC is coming soon) you need survivability first. Ran a ToTC 25 man pug the other day. Both tanks had 44k Health and could not take the hits from the second jormungar when the first one went down (we had good heals, it was simply the hits were too hard).
Herbalism - Just don't see 2k over 5 seconds being enough to make a difference for a tank. Nice for melee DPS, but not a tank.
Enchanting is a huge money maker if you have already leveled it. The ability to DE items is huge.

So from a $ perspective if I had leveled enchanting I would take either Mining or JC. JC may not get you much money (tips only basically on my server) but mining makes money and helps your survivability. If you want the best survivability I would suggest mining and JC. You can use the ore you mine to prospect gems to help you level JC which is a big advantage to that. It dramatically reduces the costs of leveling JC’ing.

It depends on what you want out of your professions. Do you want to make money? Or do you want the best possible stats for your tanking gear?

For the former, I think enchanting paired with any crafting profession is probably good.

For the latter, I know you can't go wrong with blacksmithing and jewelcrafting, but those are gonna be freaking expensive to level without mining (I know, there are several people in my guild who have done this). Another *awesome* tanking profession is engineering, not for the stats but because you have lots of surprisingly useful items such as smoke flares (for marking positions when explaining a fight) to exploding bunnies (best Auriya pull ever).

So my recommendation would be probably either Jewelcrafting/Blacksmithing or Jewelcrafting/Engineering if you want uber tanky goodness. But you'll get an okay use out of enchanting or inscription as well due to the extra finger or shoulder enchants, respectively.

I definitely recommend going with two crafting professions if you are serious about this character profs. You can actually make more money this way, if you play the AH, and it's *definitely* better for you stat-wise.

You might want to talk about the amazing synergy between Blacksmithing and Jewelcrafting or Alchemy and Inscription at lvl 80. With JC + BS you get 3 custom JC gems and an additional socket on one of your pieces. 3 Runed Dragon's Eye, 2 of which are in new sockets provided by blacksmithing so you only have to give up 1 Runed Scarlet Ruby, provides 77 extra SP . With Alch + Inscrip., assuming you are using Flask of the Frost Wyrm and replace Greater Inscription of the Crag with Master's Inscription of the Crag, you gain 68 more spell power, 1 more Mp5, and 4 hour long flasks vs 2 hour long flasks . Of course these bonuses are not GIGANTIC must have bonuses, but if you are very hardcore about the game and are trying to maximize your potential, these combos are the way to go.

Enchanting, Skinning, Talioring: These three professions do not require mining nor interfere with it. Skinning is an exceptional choice to take with mining though, as with two gathering skills you can bring in the money fast.

Just glanced at it, looks really nice. Under skinning you say tailoring doesn't need leatherworking, but there are a few recipes that do (at least in the pre-BC level range). I would say it goes better with tailoring than blacksmithing, especially since tailoring does not require any other profession like blacksmithing does.

EDIT: Also you missed inscription when talking about herbalism, like alchemy inscription is a perfect match, so don't neglect it!

EDIT (again): Under fishing/cooking you might wanna mention that it's best to level them together, since you can cook the things you fish up!

Looks like a nice guide for people who just started playing WoW. The presentation is really good.

For your problem with tables, fear not, there is a solution! Dark_fanboy wrote a guide about creating tables which you might want to consider. You can find it under Guides -> General Guides -> Guide Writing -> Creating Tables or simply use this link: http://www.wow-pro.com/general_guides/creating_tables.